CONECA selects Cherrypickers Award winners

Every year at the ANA’s, World’s Fair Of Money, the Combined Organizations of Numismatic Error Collectors Of America (CONECA) gathers together for their annual event dubbed Errorama. It includes a club table, an Awards Banquet and a Cherrypickers Award contest where a certificate and prize are given out for the best die variety and error coin cherry picked at the convention.

The coins must have been purchased at the show at prices significantly less than the coins are actually worth to qualify. For example, a collector looking through a dealer’s stock that finds a 1944-D/S Over Mintmark cent offered simply as a 1944-D cent for a couple of dollars, will have “cherrypicked” a much more valuable variety at the cost of a normal coin.

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This year the Cherrypickers Award for the best variety went to Joe Ceravone who found a Brilliant Uncirculated 1941-S/S Walking Liberty half dollar listed in the Cherrypickers’ Guide To Rare Die Varieties as FS-501 and by CONECA as RPM-001. The image shown here is of the same stage found by Ceravone from the CONECA photo file.

The best error coin award was a tough decision for the judges as no clear-cut error coin such as a Doubled Strike was entered. All items entered were die varieties of a sort. But recognizing that many coins considered varieties are also errors, we decided to pick the one that stood out from the crowd that some specialists consider a variety while others see it as an error.

Brian Raines of Ohio submitted a 1921 Morgan dollar that exhibited multiple and widely displaced denticle clashes on the reverse of the coin. It is listed by Leroy Van Allen as VAM-31 A1. How the clash marks of rim denticles occurred so widely displaced is open to speculation but the coin was an unusually high grade for this error-variety (PCGS MS62) and in a tough die stage; the stage that also shows the anomaly to best advantage. As such, it was the clear winner within the error category. The winner of the best variety received a copy of Cherrypickers’ Guide To Rare Die Varieties 5th Edition, Volume 2 autographed by the authors and editor; Bill Fivaz, J.T Stanton and Ken Potter while the winner of the best error received a copy of the Top 100 Error Coins, autographed by co-author, Fred Weinberg.

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